Sony - WH-1000XM4 (Unboxed)

My background:
Not a true a Audiophile, I listen to cheap bitrate songs from amazon music/spotify premium over SoundMagic E11c (before that was my Oneplus Icons) , i preferred wired in-ear passive anc earphones until 2020. the constant coiling of the wires and the fuss about them XM3's being the ultimate king of ANC (a YouTube video suggestion made me go on loops of Bluetooth anc headphones) got me curious about wireless anc Bluetooth headphones.

The curiosity of XM4 and other redundant stories:
The news of XM4's around the corner made me wait and check them out, frankly i was not prepared to shell out ~30k on a headphone, the max i had spent on decent pair of earphones was 4k, on 18 Sept when they went on sale at 2PM, i was unsure should i pick them up, this has been the biggest spend for myself in 2020, yup, my last splurge was on Fossil hybrid watch of around 15k, that was way back anyway in Jan 2020, the happy times where u could walk over a human without mask, and fight with fist and head butts, yup good old days. Frankly i had no done comparison of Momentum Wireless 3 or Bose 700 too, i was in trance about these Sony's so much when i landed on the page, my cooped up conscious woke up suddenly seeing that huge price tag, making me a step back and think, so few comparisons and price check caused me to ponder on few stuff.

Things that made me stop clicking the buy now for a moment:
Three things bothered me :
1 - LDAC/AAC/SBC only codecs (why no aptX codec whatsoever, at least atpX LL should've been included)
2 - just 1 year warranty ( Sennheiser & Shure had 2 years), i guess Sony is too cocky and proud
3 - Shure Aonic 50 was at a tempting price with 50mm drivers and legendary sound quality

Then the jump and why i bought them:
Also i was frustrated about working so much at home, i had to go splurge my hard earned money on some tech junk obviously to satiate my monkey brain desires. i just hope there is no horrible latency between video and sound when i pair these to my firestick and play movies in Netflix/Prime or whatever, my home is potshot of angry and extremely extroverted talkative adults, so any moment pf those deep theatre movie watching experience is missed sorely at home, so i prayed a million times after i spent 28490, please let them work.

Delivery & Unboxing Saga:
Thankfully the parcel arrived next day morning itself by 8AM, that was the fastest delivery of goods ever in my 3 decades of existence, super fast just as Headphone Zone promised express shipping, the unpacking and quality of the contents didn't disappoint the insatiable lust in me (it will cry again one day for something new). the carrying case has a weird puzzle based method to stowaway your expensive jewels, so pay attention, it can get frustrating if you try putting them away in hurry.

Setting up and myriad confusions:
Okay so you first need to charge these suckers for 1-3 hours, depending on how much they juiced them out of the factory; then before you go ahead pairing install the Sony | Headphones Connect app:
After you open the app, go through the setup for smooth connection, the first thing u will see is software patch for ver 2.0.6 firmware, don't worry, the software gets successfully installed even though the app complains that software got aborted in notifications and I can confirm this firmware won't brick your precious!

First try and adjust headphones over your head properly for comfort and then do Noise Cancellation optimization (this is vital), there is 20 levels of anc cut-off between complete cutoff to varied levels of ambient sounds let-in, also there is no complete voice cutoff, if someone is speaking loudly, you will hear them through, no anc can completely cut them off. Depending on the phone you use, the Bluetooth codec may default to sbc/aac. my Galaxy S10 had LDAC switch within the Bluetooth options so it easy, this all depends on how u figure out the whole shenanigans of this through your phone ui & developer options, this was all new to me, since this is my first true high end Bluetooth device with so many variables to control.

Audio Quality:
since i am an average consumer, still learning, i felt the larger drivers and the anc helped me differentiate between the stereo setup and all the instruments in most songs, the high's and low are balanced so beautifully, you actually enjoy the songs, switch to prefer sound quality setting & DSEE extreme for better upscaling of songs, of course this does not apply to tidal high fidelity stream.

Wrap-up:
okay so my main criterion was using these for watching movies streamed, i am happy to say, i see no latency or lag in audio/video sync, so my main gripe is dusted, the audio was beautiful and the anc helps me listen at very low volumes too :)
Don't go by those reviews, i know from a true geek, reviews are important, more often than not, i feel our heart knows what it wants, so go splurge away if you're in doubt, these just work.

Wow, i love this.. you have sent the headphones over the worst delivery service- "delhivery". I have nt received the product yet( 8 days since purchase). Kudos for your great effrort in making the buy an uimaginable service. But appreciate your willingness to ask the review for a product, which i paid for, but didnt receive.. I am pretty sure there eill be a greater crowd , who felt the same with your choice of delhivery service..Thanks

After reading a lot about this headphone, I decided to invest money for this guy with the target of smooth calls for work. We use Microsoft teams for our business calls. I have been facing lot of distractions from various load noises as Street vendors, aircrafts as I live near HAL airport in Bangalore. In last couple is months, HAL airport is hyper active and these fighter jets make your deaf for couple of mins. During that time, I had to either miss what someone has said on the call or just put everyone on wait till that plane goes off.

These headphones made my life really easy. I am having uninterrupted calls without any disturbance. It doesn't make aircraft noise zero but brings it down to min which don't bother me. I don't miss any singal word in the call. My colleagues have acknowledged that they don't hear outside noise, anymore.

I realised that it is less effective on street dogs barking. 😊

Regarding battery backup, in one charge, it gives me 2-3 days of work calls backup. I switched off as I finish my work.

I haven't used for music, so no comments in that context.

THESE ARE THE BEST HEADPHONES THAT MONEY CAN BUY...SUCH AWESOMENESS .
SOUND :10/10
CLARITY:10/10
MIC:10/10
NOISE CANCELLATION:10/10

I have used several headphones( M50X, DT770) over the past year or so and I finally wanted to switch over to a Bluetooth alternative, hopefully, one with sound cancellation. I was about to buy WH1000XM3 but rumors about the XM4 started floating around and I waited to get these.
Here's what I can say after a week of using these-
Amazing battery life, I am not a heavy user but still, the battery life is pretty amazing. I charged these when I got them and I am at about 60% after a week.
The sound quality is good, not the best out there but if you use the equalizer in the app, then you can get really good use out of these.
The app is buggy sometimes but works okay most of the time.
Active Noise cancellation is the start of the show, It's almost like you're in another world. Definitely, the best ANC headphones out there, although I felt the headphones clamping force increase when ANC was on so I guess they maintain pressure in the chamber, not really sure.
Really satisfied with these, definitely worth the price! When I got mine, I was so happy with them that I ended up buying one for my brother as a gift as well!

I’ve heard better sounding headphones around and under this price point but I haven’t used any that come close to this in terms of noise-cancellation. The sound quality is the best I’ve heard on a pair of Bluetooth noise-cancellation headphones, even without tweaking the EQ on the app. I find them comfortable to wear for long periods of time and so far, the battery life has been stellar. There’s some neat functionality in here too.

If you don’t care much about noise-cancellation, maybe check out other options as well. If you don’t need noise cancellation or bluetooth at all and care solely about sound quality, definitely check out other options. I’m very happy with these for travel and listening in noisy environments. Thanks Headphonezone for the speedy delivery!

I was a heretic once. I thought that noise cancellation was a gimmick. I had seen reviews from all the top reviewers. I had seen the praises but never bothered to look into it. 4 being my lucky number, my body was ready. The features came at me like I was a baker with bread during the great depression. Noise cancellation. Location based Ambient mode. Bit rate upscaling. Touch controls. Ultra premium quality. I am still in a trance and trying to recover while listening to Lazarus again and again.

Tl;dr: 100/10. I am a believer now.